Relatively secure meaning, ultimately even if they go through a lot of crap and put each other through a lot of crap, they love each other at the end of the day. Yeah.
5. Sookie Stackhouse and Tara Thornton (Anna Paquin and Rutina Wesley, True Blood)
Considering that book!Sookie only seems to speak to book!Tara when she needs a new dress so she can go read the minds of humans around vampires, and book!Tara didn’t get shot in the head, they have a healthier relationship, probably. Sookie and Tara have been best friends for their whole lives, it’s said, and they can tell each other anything. I guess it’s unfortunate for our perception of their friendship that it starts to get complicated right as the show is beginning. These two are driven apart because Sookie is (being somewhat supernatural herself, dating supernatural types) very pro-”supe,” as they say, and Tara is (having been used and hurt by supernatural types) very anti-supe. But they seem to reconcile by the end of the whole witch drama… just to be ruined by craycray Debbie (Brit Morgan) with a gun. Eh.
4. Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg (Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
These two meet on Buffy’s first day at Sunnydale High, though all that goes on in the subsequent seven seasons is enough to make it feel like they’ve known each other for a whole lifetime. Things aren’t always easy for these two. They study, they gossip, Buffy gets Willow to try on sexy Halloween costumes, but there’s also the part where they save each others’ lives, they save the lives of everyone around them, and Willow brings Buffy back from the dead. A lot of the magicky stuff is metaphorical for the various ups and downs of life, and in that way it can feel pretty real, but in the end, they’re still standing at each others’ side.
3. Rory Gilmore and Lane Kim (Alexis Bledel and Keiko Agena, Gilmore Girls)
They’ve known each other forever, too, and as the show progresses, they drift a bit, though not for any one dramatic reason. Their lives just take different paths. That (and, well, the fact that there are no supernatural creatures or sitcom laugh-tracks on their show) is what makes their friendship fairly realistic. People don’t stay the same forever, though even as they drift and they become their grown-up selves, Rory and Lane still love each other. And that’s nice. The high school days of swapping all the music that was hidden under floorboards were sweet, and endearing, and fun, but the grown-up days are reasonable, too.
2. Max Black and Caroline Channing (Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs, 2 Broke Girls)
They have just such a cute, snarky friendship. Max is just sarcastic about everything ever, so it’s rare to catch her in a sincere mood, but despite her quite carefully put-together veneer, Caroline’s a pretty sincere person. She’s open about her feelings regarding most things, including most things Max-related, and she accepts Max’s teasing, but only because she knows it means love. She’s not always practical, but she’s surprisingly sweet, and they’re both what the other seems to need.
1. Kaylee Frye and Inara Serra (Jewel Staite and Morena Baccarin, Firefly)
Though not a lot of time is spent on their friendship (because not a lot of time is spent on most things, given how gorram short Firefly was) it’s always, always apparent. Their first onscreen interaction is fondly saying to the other, “hey, you” – you don’t just “hey, you” someone you’re not close with. The other two big instances are the girly time hair-brushing scene in “The Train Job” and the little bout of commiseration in “The Message,” but it’s what’s going on in the background of scenes that makes the point best. (This is part of that background reacting thing.) One of my favorite moments in Serenity is Inara putting a hand on Kaylee’s shoulder while Mal (Nathan Fillion) and Jayne (Adam Baldwin) are arguing. It’s so simple. So background. Hardly more than a quick cut. But it says so much about these two: Inara knows, for example, that Kaylee’s uncomfortable, and she’s trying to calm her a little. They haven’t known each other forever. They can measure the duration of their friendship in months. And they’re nothing alike in a lot of ways. But they’re absolutely best friends.
–your fangirl heroine.
